I wish I was one of those who think that our jobs are safer than the rest of the industry, at least for a while. However, I have no arguments for that. What are your arguments why you think we are safer than the rest in this industry?
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VMware is not making financial statements to Wall Street anymore, due to merger talks. Company announce layoffs when they're reporting poor results. We aren't announcing anything until after the merger completes.
Timing is off, but Hock is going to cut jobs, lots of them if the past is an indication of the future. I see no reason to doubt that history will repeat itself - and yes, that is not a 100% assertion - who the he-l would ever believe "predictions" are 100% certain and then get all riled up about it not coming true. Look at the Hock Tan playbook in action over at Citrix on this very web site. That is being done by Hock's protege, who was the face of the VMware/Broadcom deal before he jumped ship from Broadcom to CSG last year.
Come back after the deal is closed an see if you are so optimistic at that time.
We wait with baited breath...
Meh. Look back over the previous six months here and on TB. There were forecasts that we were cutting 25% of jobs in January, that we were going to be gutted at the end of this fiscal year.
None of it has come true. People have put fear out left and right, continuously. Most based upon "this is how it's always been done; there's a playbook!"
We're all still here. Except for Poor Performers and PIP.
This is the quiet before the storm.
Like @1qyn+1kZwjNBn says, most other companies over-hired and their layoffs were also over-hyped. 5-10% of the workforce is not unusual and RIFs have become the preferred method to get rid of underperformers. Yes, some good people get caught up in these, too, but RIFs are preferred over performance management.
Second, VMware is unlikely to take action in the next few months. They will leave it up to BC to be the bad cop and make the painful cuts. If you see layoffs at scale prior to the BC deal closing, it might be a sign that the sentiment shifted towards the acquisition failing (or taking substantially longer to close)
The common reasons for those companies laid off thousands of employees are
- Overhired during 2021/2022: At least VMW was not hiring aggressively like Amazon, Google, and Meta. Not to mention high attrition rate result from high TC package from those companies doing layoff recently (2021 to mid 2022) and bad performing VMW stock (starting 2020 while all other tech stocks skyrocket)
Someone might argue that there are too many dead weight in VMW, I agree. Twitter is still working after laid off 70%+ employees, but this will not happen until acquisition complete.
- Pressure from Wall street due to low revenue increment: Nobody cares about VMW stock or revenue now due to the merger. There is a guy who is willing to pay 65B to buy it. Shareholders just need to wait for months and cash out.